Free Ultimate Kill (Book 1 Ultimate CORE Trilogy) (CORE Series) by Kristine Mason Page A

telling him anything. This was one of them. “One night I was cocktailing at a club and had just gotten back to my apartment. It was late, about three in the morning. I hung up my coat, got myself a glass of water…everything was normal, fine. When I went into my bedroom to change, he attacked me.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “He wasn’t alone.” The man who left death in his wake always had an entourage with him. The Columbian man who had been with him that night at her apartment had always been a staple and at one time she’d thought he was his bodyguard. Although he probably was, she’d suspected Santiago also handled the dirty work. Like holding a knife against her throat. “The man he was with held the knife, while my stalker tore my shirt from my body and told me that if he couldn’t have me, then no one could.”  
    Because he’d robbed her of her family, she’d become numb to what had happened that night. She no longer experienced nausea when she thought about it, no longer cried. She saved her tears for those who mattered—her parents, brother and Jake.
    “I was terrified, not because he’d kill me but because no one would know for sure it was him who did it. I kept thinking about my family, about what they’d go through. Pictured them standing in the morgue viewing my dead body.” She drew in a deep breath. “I couldn’t let that happen. So I screamed, loud and long, even when he and his friend tried to silence me with their fists. Thank God the walls to my apartment were paper-thin. My neighbor came banging on my door yelling that he’d called the police. The two men left through the window.” She shrugged. “It was only a ten-foot drop.”
    “Did you report the attack?” he asked, his tone low and menacing, as if he had murder on his mind.  
    She shook her head. “You have to understand, he came from money and his family had a lot of influence. No one was going to believe me, a nineteen-year-old cocktail waitress, over him. Besides, he was very careful and covered his tracks. Even though I could’ve had him arrested for attacking me at my apartment, he probably would’ve gotten out on bail and then…finished the job.”
    His forearms and biceps remained flexed, tense. His eyes narrowed and filled with hatred. “Who is he?”
    She’d already told him too much. “It’s in the past and I want to keep it there. I haven’t been Lisa Monroe for eight years.”
    He leaned back in the chair and looked to his half empty plate. “Who is he?” he repeated.
    “Someone you can’t touch.”
    His eyes quickly captured hers. “Why?”
    “Let it go, Jake.” She stood, grabbed her plate and moved toward the sink. “I have.”
    His chair scraped against the tile. In seconds, he gripped her arm and spun her away from the sink. “Bullshit.”
    “Think what you want. I don’t care.”
    “That’s the problem. I do care,” he said, his voice still harsh, but his eyes softening. “And I can’t believe that you’d willing allow yourself to be bullied into being someone else, instead of fighting. Honestly, I can’t believe your parents went along with it.” He tightened his hold. “Are your parents really deceased? Did they know your plans?”
    Tears filled her eyes as her mom and dad’s faces swept through her mind. If only Jake knew the half of it. After she’d been attacked at her apartment, both she and Thomas had tried to talk their parents into changing their identities, too. Her mom and dad wouldn’t hear of it. They were both in their late fifties, were zeroing in on retirement, had a ton of friends and refused to give up their lives. Although they were terrified on her behalf and wanted her safe, they’d wanted to go through the legal channels to end the stalking. Only her mom wound up dead in a car accident and her dad passed away two weeks later of a heart attack. But their deaths hadn’t been accidental or natural. They’d been murdered. He had